


to guard you and to guide you

by tsunderestorm



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 17:40:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13595070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunderestorm/pseuds/tsunderestorm
Summary: It’s Noctis’ turn to watch over Ignis.





	to guard you and to guide you

**Author's Note:**

> Written for IgNoct week 2018, day one for the situational prompt: Noctis acts like Ignis’ guardian angel post-game.
> 
> This kind of turned into more of a Noctis character-study with a focus on his feelings towards Ignis and their relationship as a whole, but its still a piece I’m proud of.
> 
> Additionally, I’ve recently fallen head over heels for “All I Ask of You” from Phantom of the Opera as an IgNoct song, hence the title. Please enjoy!

Noctis had made peace with his fate. When he ascended the steps to the dais, to the gaping hole in the wall through which Ardyn disappeared, he was ready for death. For _nothingness_. Ten years of darkness and no one for company but a booming voice that settled down into his soul dictating his destiny had prepared him well for the end of his existence. He’d been ready to bite back the hesitation, to look past the shake in his fingers as he gripped the staircase, to pretend his heart wasn’t thudding against his ribcage warning danger, to ignore all of that in preparation for the agony of his ascension. When he settled in on his throne of sacrifice, he’d been prepared for the pain of oblivion, had steeled himself to remain still as the arms of his forefathers wrapped him up and ran him through, made him stronger than the Astrals themselves as the sacred stone burned a brand into his finger.

What he hadn’t been ready for, however, was the aftermath. He wasn’t gone; at least, not really, instead trapped somewhere between life and death. Suspended, once more a chess piece rotated between Bahamut’s divine fingers. Tied, somehow, to the capital and its Citadel: to the crown, to Lucis, to the gods only knew what. It seemed unfair, somehow, but he supposes it’s his just punishment for taking ten years to come to terms with it. Maybe this was what happened to indecisive kings - they stuck around whether they wanted to or not.

The Citadel felt strange, alien, an unwelcoming maze. Dark and half-destroyed, he found himself resenting it, hating the way he couldn’t seem to leave the courtyard. He felt caged, jailed behind twisted iron window frames with fractured glass panes, stuck with nothing to do but wander the halls: a ghost, a specter, bone-weary despite the dissolution of his physical body. Nothing to do but walk, to re-learn each secretive locked room.

This place wasn’t his anymore, wasn’t his father’s or even his _family_ ’ _s_ because with him, it had died. It was unfamiliar, somewhere he felt like he didn’t belong or recognize, an impenetrable fortress of centuries-old half-broken stones. One he’d escaped as a child, lost alongside his kingdom as a boy, and taken back as a man…by all accounts, he should love it. He should sit the throne, should lie on his back beneath the glass ceiling and look up at the dawn his sacrifice had brought. He should fall to his knees and thank the astrals for the power to vanquish Ardyn, the dark and all its daemons, the scourge.

But he couldn’t.

He can’t, still.

Now the patterns in the halls that had so enchanted him in his youth seemed dizzying, almost disorienting. Glowing dimly like a dying ember from the back of his mind was a memory: himself, sitting cross-legged on the floor as his father spoke with Clarus, driving toy cars along the rounded loops, a miniature golden highway for his fingers. Now, the gold inlaid in the floor turned molten before his eyes, a treacherous pool of viscous liquid that he could imagine himself drowning in. It was a fight to resist the pull of his mind under, the danger of trapping him beneath obsidian tile. The walls felt like they were closing in on him, pressing him flat, removing even his ghost from existence. _Gods, was that really what he’d become?_

He had always hated the throne room the most, had resented the power it held: stronger even, it seemed, than the daemons or the astrals, than friendship or love. It had always been home to a power that could tear the smile from his father’s face, one that could suffocate Noctis with words like _duty_ and _fate_. Against his wishes, he could remember the way his father could enter the throne room with his head held high, walking tall the way he’d always told his son to and exit with his shoulders sagging, weighed down with a heavy burden it had taken too long for Noctis to understand. Entering it now he found it even colder than before, expansive and ominous, dark in spaces even the sunlight streaming through the collapsed wall couldn’t reach. Here was the dais where he’d met his death, gleaming ebony handrails on its staircases artfully repaired under Ignis’ careful instruction.

 _Ignis_.

Thinking about him hurt. He’d seen him here and there, walking beside Gladiolus down the halls they should have walked together. They looked good in the traditional robes that retainers wore: long, heavy black with gold brocade, dragging the ground as they walked with paces matched. They seemed to fit them like second skins, _destined_. Devoid of his magic and the armiger they’d pulled weapons from, Gladiolus wore a smaller sword at his hip, Ignis a pair of more practical daggers up his heavy sleeves, the both of them unable to drop their watch even when the threats had been banished from the world. If he waited in the grand halls he could see them walk by, Ignis dictating to an assistant: _see to this, repair that, Noct would have wanted it that way,_ the rich softness in his voice that Noctis remembered from their moments alone turned harsh and clipped, all business. He should be there in that hallway beside them, between them, his Sword and his Shield as always. They would have walked together if things had gone differently, if Noctis had gotten his shit together sooner.

Though maybe, he thought acidly, it didn’t matter. Ever since the Crystal had chosen him at the tender age of five he’d been destined to die. He’d accepted his fate, sure, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t angry about it – he’d grown up, taken his place as a lamb on an altar with resolve in his heart and a smile on his face but it still hurt him in ways he couldn’t even describe knowing what he could have had. It burned more than the marilith venom had snaking through his veins as a child, hurt more than the Caelums’ ceremonial blades piercing his chest, made him sicker than the rage he’d felt when he found out the Niffs had killed his father. What hurt the most now was seeing Ignis exist without him, was the intangibility of a life he wanted but couldn’t have, the way he could tell how heavy Ignis’ heart was sometimes. Ever strong, Ignis only showed fleeting moments of weakness, ones he didn’t even let Gladio see, ones he didn’t know Noctis could see

( _Noctis remembered his last night on Eos, remembered falling asleep in Ignis’ arms listening to his heartbeat. “I don’t know how I’ll live without you, Noct,” Ignis had said, clutching Noctis to his chest in the tent, lips against the top of his head. Thousands of kisses, one for each day he hadn’t been able to hold him, to soothe him to sleep, to banish the nightmares that had plagued Noctis since he was small._

 _“I don’t know how the astrals expect me to do it. Everything I’ve ever done was for you.”_ )

He had to turn away from Ignis sometimes. It ached too much to look at him, to watch him hold his head high even when he was hurting, to see the scars desecrating the left side of his handsome face, scars he’d earned because of _him,_ just like Gladio. It was funny, he thought, in a bitter kind of way: he remembered times as a teenager where he would have given anything not to feel Ignis’ eyes on him, seeing through his worries and his walls to what he meant, what he needed. He had always been such an open book for his oldest friend, had always been something that Ignis could read just right: run his finger down his spine, look between the lines, lay him bare. He’d been annoyed by it then, but _gods_ , he’d give anything for Ignis to look at him now and really _see_ him.

When he couldn’t watch his lover for another minute, he wandered more. There was the rooftop with its crystal returned, shining fractured light by the glow of the moon, prismatic shapes dancing across the stone. He remembered staring at stars with Ignis there, setting up a telescope for things they couldn’t see with their naked eyes, flipping through star charts and the Cosmogony to follow the myths and legends of the Astrals by their constellations above them. When he turned his back from the Crystal, he felt eyes on him: scrutinizing, cold, appraising his every movement with divine judgment, a set of piercing blue eyes he knew too well hidden behind a scaled mask.

 _Go away_ , he thought, _haven’t you done enough?_

Beneath him, volunteers toiled tirelessly to rebuild the Citadel, hammering away night and day to restore it to its former splendor, the symbol of Lucian triumph that it was. Noctis watched as Ignis ordered the parts of the Citadel that had suffered the most in Niflheim’s attack rebuilt, watched as he directed workers to fill in the bullet holes left by the MT’s guns, the bomb craters pockmarking the old stone. Restored to its former splendor it was beautiful, but a prison nonetheless. He wondered if he’d ever leave this place.

\--

It took Ignis a long time to move into the king’s quarters, years before he filled them with his own personal flair. In the closet, Regis’ somber, solid blacks and golds left behind after the attack were slowly replaced with Ignis’ flamboyant prints, his customary purples and reds hanging alongside the formal black. It seemed like, Noctis noticed, the color was slowly returning to his life and even when everything else seemed dreary and dull, that fact made him happy. Ignis’ new bedroom was the room that had been Noctis’ father’s, and his father’s father’s, on and on back since the Citadel had been constructed and Noctis wasn’t jealous at all that it wasn’t his, only heartbroken that it wasn’t _theirs_.

Ignis’ workspace was the study that had belonged to Noctis’ father, the one that had never had a chance to belong to Noctis. He had a nameplate with _Prime Minister Scientia_ in gold print on lacquered black sitting on the desk, adamantly refusing to take the title of _King_. A Caleum he was not, an insult to Noctis’ memory as last king he would not make. _Stupid_ _Iggy_ , Noctis thought as he ran his fingers over Ignis’ hand resting on the desk, watched his fingers twitch hopefully, _you would have been a Caelum if we’d gotten married._

Noctis remembered wanting so badly to be a part of this world before he had realized he would someday _have_ to. A world of paperwork and treaties, decisions and duty, a world that Regis shut him out of to save him. All he’d wanted as a child was to sit in his father’s chair beside him and it was no different with Ignis – he would give anything to still be a part of his world. Some days he perched on the desk as Ignis worked, invisible to his lover’s notice but close enough all the same. Ignis worked himself to the bone, spending all of his time going over reports, fingers scanning back and forth over the braille or listening to a broadcast and Noctis watched him sleep less and less, eight hours a night turned to six, to three. Restless, tossing and turning in the bed they should have shared together.

Bitterly, Noctis wanted to be set free so he could stop watching Ignis hurt. Selfishly he prayed, immature as he’d been years ago. Punishingly, he knew this was what he deserved, he guessed, for not appreciating Ignis as much as he should have when he was alive. Or at least...not saying it. He’d always appreciated Ignis in a way reserved only for him, a way that no one else could ever touch.

\--

Prompto had given Ignis a gift for his birthday, four 5x7 photos in a gleaming golden frame. Noctis had been there when he’d presented it to him, heard him say that he knew he couldn’t see them but it didn’t feel right not having Noctis on his desk. The photos hurt Noctis’ heart to see, and for the first and only time since Ignis’ eyesight had been stolen away Noctis was glad he couldn’t see them.

One of them, its origins a mystery, showed he and Ignis in his childhood bedroom shortly after he’d arrived home from Tenebrae. He was in bed, the sheet pulled up over his lap and Ignis stood beside him, a hand on his back to help him sit up in bed. He was looking at the photographer while Ignis looked at him and in his hands, he held the plush recreation of the creature from his dream. _Carbuncle_ , he whispered, fingers running over the tiny object in his hands of his photograph counterpart, _I hope you’re okay, buddy, if you were ever real_. Tearing his eyes away from his own broken body: sick, still recovering, pale and frail beneath his sheets he looked to Ignis: with a smile splitting his face ear to ear as he looked down at him. Gods, had he always looked at him like that? So fond that it _hurt_?

The second was on one of his birthdays – his nineteenth, by the looks of the blurry cake on the counter. Even his patchy memory could recall that one: Ignis had made him a banana sponge cake that year, topped it with dollops of strawberry frosting so rich it had made his teeth ache. Gladio had been so mad, had told Noctis he was going to work him double in training the next day and he remembered Ignis pulling him to his chest, remembers the soothing way he’d run his hand through his hair and promised him _no love, he won’t_. With Prompto’s hand sneaking in from offscreen for another slice of cake, it must have been Gladio that took the picture, captured that moment immortalized forever. Noctis looked over the way Ignis’ glasses were knocked askew from pressing his face to the top of Noctis’ head, the moment his cheek mushed against that firm chest he’d loved to rest his head on and sleep…now it was _his own_ face that he couldn’t tear his gaze away from. Gods, had he always looked that embarrassing when Ignis pulled him into his arms? So lovesick and _relieved_? Gods knew he’d always felt it.

Third was a photo at Galdin Quay, bright and over-saturated. In it, he had a plate of Coctura’s Tenebraen cake and a plate of Ignis’ then-unnamed desserts, a cat on his lap and a seagull flying off his shoulder. He remembered _that_ day like it was yesterday, remembered the disappointed sigh when Ignis had turned around to see Noctis catering to yet _another_ wild animal, the very undignified yelp he’d made when the seagull had hopped down and stolen a pastry in its beak. Noctis was laughing in it with Ignis behind him; one hand on Noct to steady himself and the other raised against the bird, shooing it away from his prince’s pastries. It made him smile to see it, to see that last day before things _truly_ went to hell, before he’d woken up to a headline that tore the sky down around him.

The last was somber, poorly lit but beautiful: a glimpse of love bright and hopeful in the dark. The light from the headlights of Talcott’s truck illuminated them, bathed them in an artificial, too-bright glow for the moment Prompto must have wanted to capture. Side by side, their hands tucked between them with fingers laced. Noctis barely remembered it being taken, couldn’t recall the moment to his mind among the other memories of that night. A blurry campfire, Gladio’s strong arms. Prompto’s wet cheeks as he’d pressed their foreheads together. Ignis’ hands and mouth on him again, giving him the love bites he’d wear to his death, the feel of Ignis’ palms pressed against his giving him the confidence that he needed to grip his sword, the memory of his lips against his the courage he needed to speak his mind to the usurper sitting on his throne.

Looking at these snapshots of their relationship made his heart ache. Every year on his birthday, Gladio and Prompto visited and every year, Ignis would ask of Prompto the same favor: _tell me something about the photos._ Prompto told him small things, first: “ _The sun is shining so bright in this one, Iggy, it’s at Galdin Quay and the water is so blue!”_ or “ _Noct is smiling so cute in this one, you know!”_ but over the years, there became less and less to tell. The tiny details seemed tedious, the same descriptions for the expressions trite and overstated. Ignis stopped asking, and Prompto stopped visiting around the same time Gladio disappeared. It hurt Noctis to see. These were his most important people - his best friend, his Shield, his lover - drifting apart when what they really needed was each other.

When Ignis spent his fiftieth birthday crying in his room, Noctis swore that he was going to atone. He was going to be there for Ignis the same way Ignis had been for him, he was going to be _his_ advisor. Or...not, because Ignis couldn’t talk to him. His protector, then. His…something, for when he couldn’t be his partner any longer. He would watch over him, he would make sure that Ignis’ shaking shoulders wouldn’t go uncomforted by the weight of his hand, that the tears that crept unbidden from Ignis’ unseeing eyes wouldn’t make it down his cheeks before Noctis could brush them away.

Just like Noctis, Ignis rarely left the Citadel. For him, too, it seemed like the memories hung heavy over the ages-old structure, like there was some sort of tether that bound him there. Selfishly, Noctis wondered if Ignis refused to leave even when Lucis had been rebuilt and stabilized because it was _his_ final resting place and even more selfish still, he wished he would go so he wouldn’t have to see him hurt any longer. Ignis could leave; could go to Galdin Quay where he’d spent the ten long years without him, could move to Lestallum where it was warm and bright and he could feel the sun he couldn’t see on his skin. Noctis wanted him to live for himself, but he knew he wouldn’t.

Noctis found him in the gardens once, a black kitten seated on his lap, petting its back. It had blue eyes and tiny paws, shallow breaths and a weak heart. A comfort to him, maybe, he guessed as Ignis sang a lullaby under his breath: one he’d sung to him when he was younger, the tune dredging up a memory from the murky fog of his mind. Noctis watched the cat’s tongue flick over Ignis’ fingers, watched it lap up the tears he wiped from his eyes, but when he reached a hand out to pet the cat’s head he felt soft fur beneath his fingers where usually there was nothing.

The cat died the next day, and with it Noctis realized that when something was close enough to death, he could _feel_ it, and all the souls who passed him by on their way to the Crystal suddenly made _sense_.

\--

Noctis laid beside Ignis in bed - close enough to touch, but not quite there. It always made him hurt, those moments when his hands reached out for Ignis’ and passed right through. Evanescent, intangible. This hurt less: to lie beside him and nt touch. It made him feel less empty if his hands never tried than it did when they failed. Fleeting touches, sometimes - a moment where he swore Ignis’ fingertips brushed his knuckles in a memory of how they used to beneath the table, a moment when he swore he could feel Ignis’ breath on his skin when he dozed next to him.

“I never wanted this, you know,” Ignis said to his empty room. “This power.” Noctis perked up from where he'd been sitting in the windowsill, moody as ever, powerless to pull Ignis from the storm clouds that had seemed to gather around him all day. Ignis rarely spoke to him outside of a soft murmur of his name, a “good night” and it shocked him to hear it now. Foolishly he thought maybe something had changed, maybe Ignis could see him now or better still - this was all a bad dream and he’d wake up beside him in the morning, shaken from a nightmare but otherwise _fine_.

“Gladio once joked about it - ‘you’d be the better king out of the two of you’, he’d say. He couldn’t understand: I never wanted to be king. I just wanted to be _yours_.” Ignis said, setting down the report he’d been reading over and resting his head in his hands as he sat at the smaller desk in his bedroom.

Noctis frowned. He’d known (too late) how far down the depths of Ignis’ love went, how every star in the sky wasn’t enough to measure it and now, knowing what Gladio had said he was ashamed that he had always thought the same thing: Ignis was kinglier than he’d ever be but the only way he ever would have accepted it was if they’d gotten married. Noctis Scientia, he imagined, or maybe Ignis Lucis Caleum.

 _Gods_ , that made it feel like his heart was being torn out of his chest.

“I never wanted it either,” Noctis whispered sadly, an answer that he knew Ignis couldn’t hear but one that he _needed_ to say. “I just wanted to be myself. To be yours.”

He’s never regretted more that Ignis couldn’t hear him. With his fingers rubbing the tension out of his temples and his shoulders drawn together tense and tight, Noctis had never wanted to comfort him more, never really felt like Ignis had _needed_ him in the way he did now.

(Looking back, he supposed that was wrong - if there was anything he’d learned after ten years of soul-searching, it was that Ignis had always loved him, needed him, just simply _believed_ in him even when Noctis hadn’t believed in himself.)

\--

On a late September night, Noctis waited. He felt sad, in a way - at least as sad as a displaced soulmate turned angel of death could be at calling his lover to the other side. Selfishly, he was elated at the prospect of Ignis’ last few breaths leaving his lips. He’d watched him over the past few months, watched him grow frail and fatigued (side effects, he knew now, were a result of the ring he’d _slammed_ onto his finger without even a second thought that night in Altissia), start wasting away in front of him.

It was time, Noctis thought.

“Ignis…” he said, almost reverently. His fingers were on Ignis’ cheek, solid and heavy. It had gotten easier, these past few days, to touch him, to be felt in turn. Ignis was closer to Noctis now, closer to death. Slowly, his fingers plotted out a path over his cheek, from the wrinkles at the edges of his mouth and the corners of his eyes to the jagged scars seared into the left side of his face, his ruined eyelid.

Ignis shuddered in his sleep. “Noct,” he mumbled groggily, turning his head towards him. Noctis wondered if he was dreaming of him. Wondered if it was a good one, if he knew in his fantasies just how much Noctis loved him. Gently, tentatively Noctis reached to smooth out his messy hair, warm honey greying at the temples where he brushed it back from his brow.

Noctis breathed deep. Ignis had lived twenty-six years since seeing him, a greater portion of his life without his love than the time he’d had it and Noctis couldn’t stand that. The years were etched in his face, the worry weighing his once-proud shoulders down, the loneliness eating away at his will. He wanted him back, and so he called him. Part of being a guardian angel, he supposed (something Gladio had told him so made an excellent warrior as well) was knowing when to have _mercy_.

Ignis’ skin against his lips felt solid, real. Tangible, something no longer out of reach and softly, he whispered: “Come back to me.”

A hush fell over the world when Ignis exhaled the last breath from his lips, a soft sound of silencing as Noctis pulled it into his own. It felt different than the other souls he’d ushered into the crystal, Noctis thought in the few short moments between Ignis’ physical death and his re-appearance. Like something cosmic was happening, a shift in the world. Like stars re-aligning, puzzle pieces snapping back into place as he and Ignis returned to the same side of existence and somehow, he felt lighter than he had in years, less a ghost and more alive again.

“Noctis?” Ignis asked, reaching a hand out for Noctis and finding the shape of his jaw, smooth under his fingers where last time he’d found scratchy hair. “Am I...have I passed?”

Noctis sighed as he nestled back down into the crook of Ignis’ arm laid out on the pillow like he’d been waiting for him, moving into his touch, trying to convince himself that it was really happening. It seemed counter-intuitive, even cruel, to celebrate the death of his lover but when things felt real and solid and _warm_ for the first time in two decades Noctis felt nothing but relief. “What do you think, Ig?”

“I feel the same,” Ignis said matter-of-factly, bringing his hand to Noctis’ other cheek to hold it, to press a kiss to his brow, his nose, the high arches of his cheeks damp with tears.

“It doesn’t feel any different.” Noctis shrugged, refusing to hold back the smile he knew the man could feel against his hands.

“Have you been here this whole time?” Ignis asked after a few long moments, tilting his head to the side like he was listening for a falter in Noct’s voice, a sign of dishonesty, of hiding something. “It feels warm with you here, as if the dawn is breaking again after I’ve been trapped in the dark for so long.”

“Yeah, sort of. I’ve been around. Here and there. Can’t seem to leave the Citadel.” He paused, then, arching up off the bed to press his mouth to Ignis’ again, finding teeth against his lips, tongue against tongue, solid and real and _familiar_. “Not that I’d really want to, when you’re here. Someone has to watch out for you these days.”

Ignis paused, pulling back from the kiss with an indignant scoff. “I beg your pardon, Noct?”

“That’s Majesty to you,” Noct teased, ruffling Ignis’ hair the way he had so often ruffled his. Mirroring his movements, soft and careful. He tried to put so much into those few small actions: gratitude, longing, _love._ “I was King and everything.”

“And here I thought you were no longer a bratty little tyrant when you didn’t get what you want…” Ignis teased, sighing as he lowered his head to Noctis’ chest. There was no heartbeat there, but he could imagine the flutter of a pulse in the arm wrapped around his neck, the thump of a heart beneath the ribs that cradled it, strong and sturdy like shielding soldiers. “I’d never take you any other way.”

Noctis ran his hands along Ignis‘ back as he spoke, fingertips tickling the nape of his neck, the space behind his ear, trying to wrap Ignis in his love. “Maybe next time things will be different, huh? If we go into the Crystal, maybe we can try again. That’s usually where I help people go.”

“Together, then?” Ignis asked as his hand ran down Noctis’ arm, fingertips feeling the reawakening of his pulse beneath the skin, the warmth of the blood flowing in his veins as if stirring from a deep slumber, beginning again. “I must confess I’m not clear on how the idea of reincarnation works, but I’m more than willing to try it side by side with my would-be guardian angel.”

“Shut up, Iggy!” Noctis protested indignantly, even as he laced his fingers through Ignis’. “But yeah. Together.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am [tsunderestorm](twitter.com/tsunderestorm) on twitter if you’d like to chat. ♥


End file.
